EXPERIENCE

Joining the British Antarctic Survey after my first degree, meant that not only did I experience sailing all the way from Grimsby (UK) to the Antarctic, via the Falkland Islands, I also spent three seasons operating in the ‘deep field’.

Four of us, living in tents on an ice-shelf the size of Spain, for months at a time. We were running a 24-hour hot water drilling rig – resilience, endurance and resourcefulness were all required to survive and succeed in such extreme conditions.

Working in a shed at the bottom of our garden since the pandemic began, has been rather less demanding!

After the Antarctic, I spent four years living near Warsaw in Poland. Kay was working there for Unilever, and I completed my PhD in Complex Systems Modelling, commuting regularly to Cranfield University. Some interesting profiling and career psychology had identified ‘Risk’ as an ideal career for me. So, on returning to the UK in 2000, I entered the world of risk and found myself applying skills and techniques with which I was already very familiar – my infrastructure adventures had begun!

For twelve years I experienced different types of employment, working both for small, specialised consultants and larger organisations. I lead Project Risk and Value Management on major projects, facilitated Risk Workshops in a variety of contexts and learnt to educate senior management about Quantitative Risk Assessment.                

In 2011, Kay was beginning to set up her independent coaching business and, attracted by the independence, I decided to join her. So, in January 2012 Robinson Consultants was born.

For me, the transition to becoming an independent consultant represents a change in my attitude to risk (vs reward). Working for other organisations I had felt constrained in my approach to work; profit and loss, targets to achieve, reporting procedures to follow, board meetings to attend – all this made me risk-averse.

Since ‘being independent’, I have been far freer to take risks, both to turn down work and chase opportunities, I can work with a much wider variety of clients and in different ways. This sense of freedom has been exhilarating and joining Kay in RCL has been the best decision of my working life (after joining the British Antarctic Survey).